Word.ws English Dictionary

give suck

give suck verb: to suckle; to give milk from the breast (to).

Verb

give suck (third-person singular simple present gives suck, present participle giving suck, simple past gave suck, past participle given suck)

  1. (archaic) To suckle; to give milk from the breast (to).
    • Wo be in those dayes to them that are with chylde, and to them that geve sucke.1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, Matthew
    • "She brought forth the earth from her belly. She gave suck. The earth brought forth woman and the woman brought forth the first man out of her belly."1955, William Golding, The Inheritors, Faber and Faber, published 2005, page 35

Forms of give suck

third-person singular presentgives suck
present participlegiving suck
pastgave suck
past participlegiven suck

Origin of give suck

From give + suck (verb) (bare infinitive, though now generally felt as a noun).

Questions about give suck

What does give suck mean?
Give suck means to suckle; to give milk from the breast (to).
What part of speech is give suck?
Give suck is a verb.
What is the past tense of give suck?
The past tense of give suck is gave suck.

Words near give suck in the dictionary

  1. give something a shot
  2. give something a try
  3. give something a whirl
  4. give something up as a bad job
  5. give stick
  6. give suck
  7. give the ax
  8. give the axe
  9. give the bird
  10. give the devil his due
  11. give the dirts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: give suck (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “give suck.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/give_suck. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.